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mila kunis posted:Some questions I have about anarchism: Anarchists shouldn't be banging on about state coercion but ANY form of coercion. Anarchism as a platform is not necessarily opposed to centralization, and definitely not organization, but hierarchy. This is based on the observation that, not only does power corrupt, but that it's very hard to take power away from someone/a small group, once it has been granted to them. Furthermore, once a concentration of power has been established, it will tend to accumulate more power unto itself. An anarchist "state" would be based around some as-yet-undiscovered technique that could reverse this dynamic. Your question about "voluntary substates" and how to stop them competing with each other (to effectively concentrate power again and re-establish hierarchy) is pretty much what anarchism aims to discover. One potential option would be to limit groups to the size that human instincts can comfortably manage altruism (e.g. <100 people) and then make sure they have sufficient overlap by having individuals be members of multiple groups. This is all speculative, however. They key is that a successful anarchist society would have to come up with a mechanism to ensure that there wasn't a power vacuum but an active dynamic that destroyed any nascent concentration of power likely to reach enough of a critical mass to, eventually, re-establish a hierarchic society (and therefore its eventual collapse via the usual mechanism of the creation of an elite and its subsequent disconnect from being both subject to, and aware of, the material needs of the people). Anarchism doesn't imply chaos, even though the term has been made to be synonymous in popular dialog.
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Nov 12, 2020 23:42
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mila kunis posted:- The question wasn't about how a centralized authority can bungle the response, the question is how the ideal anarchist system would go about it. 'Well everyone would need to buy in to it, if they didn't whatever' is not a solution to a global pandemic. Hold a moot, achieve consensus, flog the poo poo out of cheaters. Strangely enough everyone in a community being an active participant in a decision-making process and the execution of said decisions increases compliance and cohesion rather than the opposite. Ed: by the way, the idea that this pandemic needs some kind of space program to solve it is bunk. The best solutions available right now are cheap or free: people stay apart, keep to their own homes, and use mutual aid from the community's pooled resources to ensure everyone remains housed and fed such that the desperation of one does not jeopardize the safety at all.
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Nov 12, 2020 23:51
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The Oldest Man posted:Hold a moot, achieve consensus, flog the poo poo out of cheaters. Strangely enough everyone in a community being an active participant in a decision-making process and the execution of said decisions increases compliance and cohesion rather than the opposite. Disnesquick posted:Anarchists shouldn't be banging on about state coercion but ANY form of coercion. Hmm
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Nov 12, 2020 23:54
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The Oldest Man posted:Ed: by the way, the idea that this pandemic needs some kind of space program to solve it is bunk. The best solutions available right now are cheap or free: people stay apart, keep to their own homes, and use mutual aid from the community's pooled resources to ensure everyone remains housed and fed such that the desperation of one does not jeopardize the safety at all. Why is it bunk? The process of food / commodity production and the provision of services in a society which actually implemented shutdowns isn't something trivial. Capitalism is struggling with it because it would collapse without dragging some portion of society to do work so the stay at home people can live. Food and other commodities are vastly more easier and cheaper to deliver and produce by centralized entities such as corporations or states due to economies of scale and other factors compared to mutual aid societies of individual communes.
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Nov 12, 2020 23:57
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Its a child's game to invent an absolutist interpretation of a (highly diverse and centuries old) political philosophy and then go Ah Ha! when the reality of proposals put forth by its actual adherents doesn't gel with that. Anarchist federations are not neessarily paradoxical, as long as the powers of the federation stem from the will of the constituent groups and by extension their individual members. If this suggests to you that perhaps anarchist governance will have to grapple with many of the same issues as other systems of government: you're right!
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Nov 13, 2020 00:01
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Fundamentally I think the question "how would anarchists deal with a problem that is in no small part caused by our very non-anarchist society" is like, a bit of a nonsense question. A lot of the point is that the structures and societies that would exist would not be the same as now. Yes there is not a good anarchist solution for how you get a society full of sociopathic lunatics hopped up on the pathological individualism juice to cooperate, nor is there a good authoritarian approach either because they hinge on the ability of the state to curtail people's basic freedoms at will without quarrel which has a lot of repercussions outside of a pandemic. If you propose putting a cop on every corner to shoot anyone not wearing a mask then what the gently caress kind of society would that be normally? You need some way of actually achieving a sense of social cohesion to get people to cooperate, if your society cannot get people to cooperate then something has to change, if your society could get people to cooperate but its decision making ability is removed into the hands of the most abhorrent clique of noncing freaks in the country as is the case where I live, who are utterly determined to sacrifice as many lives as possible to make themselves richer, then something has to change. I do not like centralization because I think it leads to a combination of tyranny, breakdown of societal cohesion, or just outright malevolent governance, and it erodes people's ability to overrule terrible decisions by the central government that put their lives at risk. To be clear, I don't think decentralization is the only way you can achieve a sense of social cohesion necessary for people to behave in ways that benefit others, I think it can be achieved in other ways, I think in some respects that is what social democracy aims to achieve and even manages to achieve, to a greater or lesser degree, but the problem I have is that I think that is an imperfect form of it that is susceptible to degradation over time, I want a more lasting form of society that can create people who give a poo poo about one another and where living isn't built on either exploiting others or being exploited. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 00:02
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Anarchist federations are necessarily going to need centralized decision-making and defense systems in order to defend against threats both internal and external, and, for simply having those systems, they'll forever be painted as evil totalitarians who are suppressing real socialism because of their cravings for power. Once somebody discovers lithium reserves in Chiapas, the ELZN's high esteem for notorious authoritarian Che Guevara is going to become a lot more important to western leftist discourse.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:05
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mila kunis posted:Why is it bunk? The process of food / commodity production and the provision of services in a society which actually implemented shutdowns isn't something trivial. Capitalism is struggling with it because it would collapse without dragging some portion of society to do work so the stay at home people can live. Food and other commodities are vastly more easier and cheaper to deliver and produce by centralized entities such as corporations or states due to economies of scale and other factors compared to mutual aid societies of individual communes. Anarchists do not all advocate a hardline return to cottage industry. Anarchism does not imply absence of coordination and HUGE citation needed to demonstrate that more distributed systems of governance can't respond swiftly, decisively and effectively to crises (or that centralized bodies, as a rule, can for that matter). Tbh, most of the literature on 'decision making costs' is just made up seems to me thinking thay doesn't comport with the reality of distributed decision making and network governance.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:06
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Crumbskull posted:Its a child's game to invent an absolutist interpretation of a (highly diverse and centuries old) political philosophy and then go Ah Ha! when the reality of proposals put forth by its actual adherents doesn't gel with that. Anarchist federations are not neessarily paradoxical, as long as the powers of the federation stem from the will of the constituent groups and by extension their individual members. If this suggests to you that perhaps anarchist governance will have to grapple with many of the same issues as other systems of government: you're right! but if the gains are so small - if Red Monday is not sufficiently utopian - then it's hard to justify the human costs of revolutionary change "All right, I can see the broken eggs. Now where's this omelette of yours?"
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Nov 13, 2020 00:10
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ronya posted:but if the gains are so small - if Red Monday is not sufficiently utopian - then it's hard to justify the human costs of revolutionary change I don't know what you are taking about or what a Red Monday is but personally I agrue for peaceful transition to worker and community ownership.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:12
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ronya posted:but if the gains are so small - if Red Monday is not sufficiently utopian - then it's hard to justify the human costs of revolutionary change It's getting easier every day 
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Nov 13, 2020 00:13
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Crumbskull posted:I don't know what you are taking about or what a Red Monday is but personally I agrue for peaceful transition to worker and community ownership. fair. This more applies to the direct action set
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Nov 13, 2020 00:14
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Oh, yeah if you are arguing against some nebulous hypothetical 'anarchist revolution' and doing death accountancy then I'd need to see your math.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:14
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Ferrinus posted:Anarchist federations are necessarily going to need centralized decision-making and defense systems in order to defend against threats both internal and external, and, for simply having those systems, they'll forever be painted as evil totalitarians who are suppressing real socialism because of their cravings for power. Once somebody discovers lithium reserves in Chiapas, the ELZN's high esteem for notorious authoritarian Che Guevara is going to become a lot more important to western leftist discourse. I would be more worried, honestly, that centralizing in response to existential threats would destroy what they have built anyway. You don't need to win the fight to destroy a culture with war. I hope it doesn't go that way.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:17
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mila kunis posted:Why is it bunk? The process of food / commodity production and the provision of services in a society which actually implemented shutdowns isn't something trivial. Capitalism is struggling with it because it would collapse without dragging some portion of society to do work so the stay at home people can live. Food and other commodities are vastly more easier and cheaper to deliver and produce by centralized entities such as corporations or states due to economies of scale and other factors compared to mutual aid societies of individual communes. No, capitalism is struggling because of all the non-essential labor it coerces into the workplace. Every society is going to require the farmers to keep farming, and the garbage collectors to keep collecting garbage, and the healthcare workers to keep caring for people's health. However, TGIFridays doesn't need to have seated dining rooms. Malls don't need to stay open. 95% of businesses can safely close for the 4-6 weeks that healthcare experts say are required to deal with the viruses without society collapsing. But capitalism forces waitresses to keep waiting tables to make rent. It's why non-capitalist countries like China and Vietnam were able to sufficiently lock down and get rid of the virus. And it's why an anarchist society also wouldn't have so much of a problem in the first place. What an anarchist society would have less capability to do, however, is enforce those lockdowns that have driven the virus into near extinction in those regions. Or, at least, it may have a bigger problem doing so. Frankly, warfare and climate change seem like much harder problems for anarchist societies to handle. This virus is hilariously easy to stop for any country that is driven to do so.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:18
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The Oldest Man posted:Ed: by the way, the idea that this pandemic needs some kind of space program to solve it is bunk. The best solutions available right now are cheap or free: people stay apart, keep to their own homes, and use mutual aid from the community's pooled resources to ensure everyone remains housed and fed such that the desperation of one does not jeopardize the safety at all. It's common knowledge that lockdowns are a necessary but not sufficient condition for controlling a pandemic. People staying home and self-isolating works to level the curve and slow the community spread, but only enough to buy time so that scientists, doctors and government authorities can roll out a cure, treat the sick, and perform contact-tracing. I guess it would resemble some kind of open-source project? Some group would create a centralized information aggregation source, like a website, where all the federations doing virus work could upload their data and communicate. The national union of Epidemiologists and Virologists would decide on a course of action and start researching a vaccine, while the national union of Doctors and Nurses would staff the hospitals, and recruit community volunteers to do contract tracing. EDIT: Cpt_Obvious posted:
I take issue with this. Have you ever been to Vietnam? I have, lots of times, to visit my extended family. The place is capitalist as all hell! Everybody is always hustling to make a buck, there's peddlers everywhere, everyone and their mother (and grandmother!) has converted the front of their house into a store or restaurant of some kind, and the youth loves going out to eat at trendy cafes and buying stuff at the malls. It's really hard for me to reconcile the idea that Vietnam isn't a capitalist country when you see the kids of local rich folks driving around in imported luxury vehicles and killing people in hit and run accidents. I'd say (and hearing my relatives talk) it's only communist insofar as the name of the party that's in charge. Substantively, materially, it doesn't differ substantially from any other developing market economy. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 00:20
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OwlFancier posted:I would be more worried, honestly, that centralizing in response to existential threats would destroy what they have built anyway. You don't need to win the fight to destroy a culture with war. The Zapatistas owe too much to the various indigenous communities they're composed of not to centralize to whatever extent is necessary to resist invasion or sabotage. In fact, I trust that they've already done so - they have an actual army, after all, and some way of actually enforcing their anti-COVID dictates against moving around from village to village. They draw from the Marxist-Leninist tradition as well as from anarchism! Like I posted earlier, I think a lot of leftists discount or don't realize the extent to which really-existing socialist states, including the notorious USSR and communist China, were and are already decentralized, democratic, and bottom-up to whatever extent they could afford to be. If you'd rather that your socialist project dies a noble death than struggles to a pyrrhic victory, you're not actually carrying out a serious socialist project. It is our duty to win.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:21
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DrSunshine posted:It's common knowledge that lockdowns are a necessary but not sufficient condition for controlling a pandemic. People staying home and self-isolating works to level the curve and slow the community spread, but only enough to buy time so that scientists, doctors and government authorities can roll out a cure, treat the sick, and perform contact-tracing. Follow Trevor Bedford on Twitter and you'll see that the process of actually attacking the disease epidemiologically is already a case study in self-organized groups doing horizontal peer-to-peer collaboration at speed, and in fact I don't think a lot about scientific research would be totally different in a socialist society; ie, https://nextstrain.org/.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:25
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anarchoprimitivism is a well-known school, but "WEIRD industrial society, but with village flogging" is novel I'm not sure I've seen any literature espousing that
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Nov 13, 2020 00:27
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Ferrinus posted:The Zapatistas owe too much to the various indigenous communities they're composed of not to centralize to whatever extent is necessary to resist invasion or sabotage. In fact, I trust that they've already done so - they have an actual army, after all, and some way of actually enforcing their anti-COVID dictates against moving around from village to village. Like I posted earlier, I think a lot of leftists discount or don't realize the extent to which really-existing socialist states, including the notorious USSR and communist China, were and are already decentralized, democratic, and bottom-up to whatever extent they could afford to be. No I know that, people will resist, when I say I hope it doesn't go that way I mean I hope that it doesn't destroy the good things that they have built. It is very easy to throw that out in the name of expediency in the face of an existential threat. And that's not wrong either, certainly not in the sense you could blame anyone for doing it when faced with annihilation. It might even be necessary, but it can still mean that you can end up with a much shittier society at the other end, one that goes on to repeat many of the wrongs it fought against. What I would rather doesn't really signify, in the end, things happen as they happen, but it is still sad to think how often and easily cruel societies inflict their lovely ideas on other societies through force, even if they don't conquer them. I think if nothing else you need the constant pressure against that sort of thing if you're going to have a hope of recovering a worthwhile society afterwards.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:28
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ronya posted:anarchoprimitivism is a well-known school, but "WEIRD industrial society, but with village flogging" is novel Really? It's existed more times in the real world than anarchoprimitivist societies ever have (which is loving zero)
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Nov 13, 2020 00:32
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mila kunis posted:This seems to be wrong and not actually answering the question asked. A few points: Well probably in a similar way they dealt with Cholera epidemics https://crimethinc.com/2020/05/26/the-anarchists-versus-the-plague-malatesta-and-the-cholera-epidemic-of-1884 Also regarding COVID-19, back when it first made headlines one of the few groups to study it and come up with a guideline for what to look out for and how to limit risk of exposure and if that failed what you can do about it was the anarchist doctors who made an open source epipen for diabetics. https://archive.org/details/2019ncov
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Nov 13, 2020 00:36
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OwlFancier posted:No I know that, people will resist, when I say I hope it doesn't go that way I mean I hope that it doesn't destroy the good things that they have built. It is very easy to throw that out in the name of expediency in the face of an existential threat. And that's not wrong either, certainly not in the sense you could blame anyone for doing it when faced with annihilation. It might even be necessary, but it can still mean that you can end up with a much shittier society at the other end, one that goes on to repeat many of the wrongs it fought against. I share all these concerns, but as a famous political theorist once said, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. "What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges."
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Nov 13, 2020 00:37
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DrSunshine posted:It's common knowledge that lockdowns are a necessary but not sufficient condition for controlling a pandemic. People staying home and self-isolating works to level the curve and slow the community spread, but only enough to buy time so that scientists, doctors and government authorities can roll out a cure, treat the sick, and perform contact-tracing. They have worked, and will work, to successfully stop the spread of the disease. Even Biden's advisors agree with that: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/11/biden-covid-advisor-says-us-lockdown-of-4-to-6-weeks-could-control-pandemic-and-revive-economy.html DrSunshine posted:I take issue with this. Have you ever been to Vietnam? I have, lots of times, to visit my extended family. The place is capitalist as all hell! Everybody is always hustling to make a buck, there's peddlers everywhere, everyone and their mother (and grandmother!) has converted the front of their house into a store or restaurant of some kind, and the youth loves going out to eat at trendy cafes and buying stuff at the malls. It's really hard for me to reconcile the idea that Vietnam isn't a capitalist country when you see the kids of local rich folks driving around in imported luxury vehicles and killing people in hit and run accidents. Ok, there is a very important distinction to make between capitalism and socialism: socialism doesn't mean the end of markets and profit-seeking enterprises, it means a democratically controlled system of production. In other words, capitalism is a heirarchy in which a small group of people own and profit from a business while the workers do all the work. A worker-coop is a socialist for-profit business in which every worker owns an equal share of the business. It still participates in the market and it is still profit-driven, but it is NOT capitalist. And Vietnam relies far more heavily on the worker-coop system than the capitalist one. In fact, multiple legislative roadblocks are used to disincentive private capitalist business models. However, Vietnam is still forced by the global capitalist structure to allow it to exist or face crushing embargoes. And even though it has a market system, the prices are heavily regulated by government intervention. You should watch this video about it by a Vietnamese citizen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMubOw5H-yo Edit: All that said, it is a bit unfair to declare Vietnam "non-capitalist", because it is physically impossible not to partake in global capitalism.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:45
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Eh?
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Nov 13, 2020 00:47
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Co-ops aren't for profit businesses, they are member benefit associations that may produce a surplus.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:50
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Crumbskull posted:Co-ops aren't for profit businesses, they are member benefit associations that may produce a surplus. Isn't that just profit for the workers under a different name?
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Nov 13, 2020 00:51
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I think the objection is to the use of the word "profit" because that implies it's going to some guy's boat fund. The surplus is the LTV word for the... surplus... funds generated by the business after materials and labour have been paid. With the notion that a co-op might choose to do a variety of things with it, such as reinvestment or paying to the workers, but nobody should be sitting there and extracting it while doing nothing.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:52
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Cpt_Obvious posted:You should watch this video about it by a Vietnamese citizen: This is the kind of thing I'm gesturing at above. The socialists leading Vietnam had and still have a responsibility to the working and peasant classes that they're leading, which contain of plenty of, like, regular guys and gals who just happen to appreciate what the socialists have accomplished so far rather than being 100% cadres of die-hard Marxists. Technically, even after the USSR collapsed, they could have told the IMF to gently caress off and opted for total autarky, and maybe it would have allowed them to achieve their current standard of living in merely one or two or five extra decades, but that's a lot of extra misery you're multiplying across a whole lot of human life-years. Does it suck to have to liberalize to partake in the world market? Absolutely, it's horrible. Was there a better choice? I'm not sure I can envision one. Geopolitical circumstances didn't have to shake out that way, but they did, and at that point all you can do is make the best play with the cards you've been dealt. If a car's barreling down the road at you, you might have to leap to your right and fall in a ditch, or leap to your left and fall in a puddle, but you don't have the option to simply hold out a hand and will the car to a halt as much as it would look really cool.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:54
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Isn't that just profit for the workers under a different name? Well, yes, but OwlFancier posted:I think the objection is to the use of the word "profit" because that implies it's going to some guy's boat fund. Exactly.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:58
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Ferrinus posted:If a car's barreling down the road at you, you might have to leap to your right and fall in a ditch, or leap to your left and fall in a puddle, but you don't have the option to simply hold out a hand and will the car to a halt as much as it would look really cool. Sounds like someone doesn't know the power of juche
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Nov 13, 2020 00:59
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Technically, wages in a worker coop ARE THE PROFIT MARGIN  JK...kinda.
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Nov 13, 2020 01:01
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Is there any evidence that capitalism is failing? Why? I would argue that our capitalist system is stronger and more entrenched than ever. Pointing out that capitalism is exploitative and doesn't meet the needs of many people (and far fewer than other systems) does not, inevitably, mean that capitalism is failing (outside of Marxism, I guess). I think in some ways this thread is the evidence of the strength of this system - we're theorycrafting hypothetical anarchist responses to a pandemic. How can we transform capitalism into a better system? Educating people about better alternatives is an important first step, but its just a first step. Owlspiracy fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 01:04
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Cpt_Obvious posted:They have worked, and will work, to successfully stop the spread of the disease. Even Biden's advisors agree with that: I think you're misunderstanding me. I didn't say that lockdowns wouldn't stop the spread of the disease - I said that lockdowns alone wouldn't stop the spread of the disease. This is backed up by expert opinion. You don't just need to stop all social activity, you also need to be doing other things, like contact tracing and vaccine research.
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Nov 13, 2020 01:07
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Capitalism requires growth. It grows by finding new places, people, resources to exploit, or increasing what it can squeeze out of the existing ones. That is why it makes new things to sell to people and favours removing their ability to meet needs themselves so it can sell them new things to meet those needs. But it can't grow forever, there are not infinite spaces, resources, and people on the planet. Climate change is a crisis of capitalism because it is an expression of its inability to abide contraction, it must keep destroying the planet because if it does not, it will stop growing, and that causes economic collapse under capitalism. Of course if it kills a billion people and renders a large swathe of the earth uninhabitable that will also cause a collapse, but that will be involuntary. That's how it goes, it keeps booming until it collapses under its own weight. One of the big reasons it needs to grow constantly is because of the rate of profit thing. Basically as outlined earlier in the thread, if you invent a machine that makes gizmos twice as easily as before, then the value of gizmos falls, because they're twice as easy to make. This means the gizmo market has one of two things happen, either it booms as people buy twice as many gizmos (necessitating twice as many resources to fuel gizmo production) or the arse falls out of it because now gizmos are worth half as much and people are still buying the same amount. Either it grows, or it collapses. Production efficiency gains translate to reduced rate of profit because of how the market works. The other option is price fixing, where all the gizmo producers agree to keep the price the same and pocket the extra cash, but that requires either a cartel or a monopoly. And the issue with that approach long term is you cut your wage payments in half with the efficiency gain but you're still charging people the same amount. But if you keep doing that everywhere, where's the extra money gonna come from? Whos gonna be able to buy anything if nobody is working cos you automated all the jobs away? Either you gotta cut the price or you gotta grow the economy and get people new jobs so they can buy things. Cos you're sucking all the money out with profit extraction. It grows, or it collapses. The rate of profit falls and must be buoyed up by growth. Someone who is gooder at theory please check this I am not a theory person. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 01:16
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Aruan posted:Is there any evidence that capitalism is failing? Why? I would argue that our capitalist system is stronger and more entrenched than ever. Pointing out that capitalism is exploitative and doesn't meet the needs of many people (and far fewer than other systems) does not, inevitably, mean that capitalism is failing (outside of Marxism, I guess). You're going to have to define what "failing" means. If you mean failing to address the concerns of the people, then certainly it is doing so. However, capitalism does not have the goal of making life better for everyone (only wealthy business owners), so that's not a fair metric by which you can judge it. In fact, the worse that worker's lives become, the more profit that is being wrenched from them. A better metric might be stability, however capitalism is a notoriously unstable system. On average, every 4-7 years there is a massive economic downturn. So it's going to be very hard to judge it by stability being that it is an inherently unstable system. If the goal of capitalism is to siphon wealth from the few and into the many, then it is indeed a very effective and efficient system. Marx spent many many pages lauding how powerful capitalism is, and how much such a system has furthered our technologies and capabilities to exploit natural resources. However, there seems to be a constant stream of riots happening in *checks notes* everywhere right now, which suggests that the grinding gears of capitalism have ground the workers too greatly for them to bear.
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Nov 13, 2020 01:20
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Yes I understand Marx's theory of why capitalism will inevitably collapse, but that doesn't seem to conform the reality in which we live, in which capitalist systems are stronger than ever. I am skeptical if climate change will be a fatal shock to the system if a pandemic which has killed hundreds of thousands and put one third of people out fo work has inspired more anger against restrictions than against the system which allowed people to die in the first place. Instead, I think its far more likely that the end effect of climate change on capitalist system is a return to earlier colonialism-style exploitation where the western nations are willing to cannibalize the other continents for their resources to maintain standards of living.
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Nov 13, 2020 01:21
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Aruan posted:Yes I understand Marx's theory of why capitalism will inevitably collapse, but that doesn't seem to conform the reality in which we live, in which capitalist systems are stronger than ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1Y6c_M92PQ
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Nov 13, 2020 01:22
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DrSunshine posted:I think you're misunderstanding me. I didn't say that lockdowns wouldn't stop the spread of the disease - I said that lockdowns alone wouldn't stop the spread of the disease. This is backed up by expert opinion. You don't just need to stop all social activity, you also need to be doing other things, like contact tracing and vaccine research. Contact tracing + lockdowns (both at a personal and a regional level) is enough to contain and kill this. Six weeks of strict bubbling and the fucker goes away. New Zealand proves that. An anarchist society would be far, far more effective at just running at a society-wide skeleton crew level and letting people not have to work for those six weeks than our capitalist one.
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Nov 13, 2020 01:23
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Cpt_Obvious posted:You're going to have to define what "failing" means. If you mean failing to address the concerns of the people, then certainly it is doing so. However, capitalism does not have the goal of making life better for everyone (only wealthy business owners), so that's not a fair metric by which you can judge it. In fact, the worse that worker's lives become, the more profit that is being wrenched from them. If you want to "check notes" I would love to here an explanation for why the current sporadic unrest which has ... *checks notes* led to no meaningful change, has largely ended, and has nothing to do with labor conditions is a sign of anything other than the strength of the current capitalism system to effectively resist internal threats (and please, I don't need you to explain the role of the police in capitalism). I too would love for a meaningful class consciousness to develop in the United States, but instead our system - like it has for hundreds of years - effectively divides class allies along racial and cultural lines. There are hundreds of thousands of dead, our government is entirely unwillingly to address the needs of the one-third of country who are out of work and facing impending homelessness, and... the system continues on, grinding away. Owlspiracy fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 01:26
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